Various aspects of the present invention relate generally to archiving and extracting system management facility (SMF) data and more specifically to archiving and extracting SMF data that includes signatures.
SMF data provides a method for archiving computer (e.g., mainframe computer) activity records to history files for later extraction. Activities that are archived include I/O activity, network activity, error conditions, etc. A specific time-slice of SMF data generated on a single system to be archived in one or more history files is called a dump. Further, the SMF data dump may include signatures that are used for verifying that the SMF data that precedes the signature is correct. These signatures may be spread throughout the SMF data dump, with each signature being at the end of the data it is meant to verify.
To extract the archived data, a user issues an extraction instruction, and if the data is verified as correct, then the data is extracted.